One of the strongest themes of this story is that idea that individual freedom cannot exist outside of one's involvement in society. In other words, one cannot remove oneself from the society of other humans or the structures of society in order to discover oneself, because it is our engagement with others and our place within the structure of society that helps define who we are. The fate of the protagonist could also be seen as a commentary on the effort to be at one with nature and how this is impossible to achieve in the modern world, because we have become too accustomed to surviving within a world of human conveniences, luxuries, tools and structures.